Cardboard
Eighteen – summoned to serve
Stripped for the medical surveyors
Shorn – shod – clad in horsehair
Pieces of looking glass fed to the stomach
Thereafter drilled from the manual of war
One dawn driven through long narrow streets of bricks covered in stone-dust
From the open back of the lorry the boxed-in sky
Heckle the early workers going to factory shop office store
To squaddies all women are whores
After the narrow streets the sky opens in sinister radiance
The drained marsh in a curve of the great river
Curlews geese mallards driven away by wars a century ago
Mist drifts in the silence over the damp grass
Orders shouted far off as shrill as cries of the wounded
We are marched to the butts to practice firing rifle from the prone position
As per manual
We lie in a row
Each man two body lengths apart from the next
Ahead the grassy bank
Below it the trench where the unseen butt-fatigue waits
Elbows dug in the ground
Left arm and hand steady the barrel
Fingers of right hand on trigger-guard and trigger
As per manual
Mist rolls away across the river
The sky is silent
The earth smells of flesh
Out of the trench a lost sound -- the ground hiccups
My finger gathers the slack on the trigger – stops at the fire-point
Per manual
I look down the barrel to the aiming-sight
The target springs up on the grassy bank
The colour of brown packing-paper
A cardboard man
Now – press the finger against the last barrier of resistance
Now -- now
To shoot
As per manual
2
The mist rolls away and tumbles into the river
The sky is silent
Death waits in my finger
It is old and cold with dirt under the nail
I will never leave this moment
Never come out of it
I will live my life in it
I know then that the second is shaped to pass in one direction
A finger is moving
Per manual
I kill the cardboard man
The last shots rattle away in the ranks on either side
Silence
The white security flag is hoisted
A bandage slipping upwards on the sky
Black blobs – heads – shoulders -- bob on the bank
The squaddie-fatigues climbing up from the trench
We march towards them over the wet grass to check our score
I reach the cardboard man
He has been shot many times before today
Most in the stomach and chest -- some in the bowels and face
Restored for reuse
The holes run together in jagged rents pasted over with paper squares
Some dried hard and shiny white and cracked and curled at the edges
Some still sodden with paste that gleams as dully as spittle and the paper sags
below to a world of lakes
The side of the head is grazed
The frame shattered and loose
Restored for reuse
The NCO marks my score on his clipboard
I am adequate
I reach out and put my finger in a paper wound
Later we practice the Bren – a chortling toy -- firing from the hip as per
manual
Then hurl grenades
Clutch the small metal bomb in the fist
Pull out the pin – thumb holds down the spring – arm back – throw
And wait
As per manual
Men tense and jocular as time imitates death
Detonation – the short gasp of metal
3
Sandwiches and tea from an urn on a trestle table – wooden legs settled in
mud
Later the lorries rev and lurch and the days marked for service follow
If the target had been flesh would your finger have crossed the barrier?
Flesh blood bone and hair
Him or me?
Is he skilled in killing -- killed yesterday and will kill tomorrow in dark
trenches cruelly cut in the earth or in day-light butchery where streets meet?
Is he an innocent hauled from his bike as he cycled to work in factory shop
office or store to be stripped and shorn and shod and glad in a body bag with
medals?
Him or me?
Are you guilty of innocence?
Is knowledge betrayed by questions?
The disputation of Christ and the Bearded-lady
There will be no time for exegesis of breath or brain when you meet him on
the lip of the grave
The cardboard man is always with me
The ghost that goes before me and follows me
That stands in empty street-doorways and looks in through the windows of
crowded rooms -- that hands me the forms to sign -- if he were flesh and
blood? -- that turns my head back when I look away from the face that has
forgotten how tears are shed – that wakes me at night to listen to silence –
Him or me?
And in small things
Last night the scrape of the chair leg – this morning the slice of bread used to
clean the plate in the transport café -- did he kill yesterday? – is knowledge
betrayed by questions?
He knows prison walls are build of sand mortared with tears and the spit of
curses – if he was flesh and blood ? – the beetle on its back in the stairwell its
legs telling the rosary of desolation -- the debris of grubby facts that litters
the world – the bones of birds that fall from the sky – bones are flesh and
flesh is blood – is innocence guilt?
He asks if he had been flesh and blood
My finger of flesh and bone grows from a cardboard hand
He is there when I forget the name of the city in which I live -- the name of the
street – the door of my neighbour’s house – he is there lest I forget
He is there when the prisoner draws an eye on the cell window
He is there when the lost draw doors on the walls of the maze
4
When I stand between power and impotence I reach out to touch the paper
wounds
He comes with me when I set my stall in the market place to earn my bread
He is there when I am offered the price of my name
He is there when I am offered a price for other men’s lives
What is the price of flesh and bone and blood and cardboard?
Time is lent: there is a time when it is taken away
We enter the hall of black mirrors
Death is final: it does not give change
What will I know in the long moment under the vast domed sky when I hand
time back to eternity so that life may live?
What will he see when he looks down the sights at my life?
Does he shoot
As per manual?
Eternity is too late and time too short to kill me
The cardboard man is always there
He eavesdrops on my life
He asks if he had been flesh and bone
I scribble on cardboard
He is always there
The drained marsh in the great curve of the river
The sky a mausoleum of curlews and sparrows
The mist drifts over the river -- grey words melting in rain
The smell of the earth
My finger touching the barrier
Silence eavesdrops on my life
A second is shaped to pass one way
I reach out to touch the paper wound
He is there
He is always there
The cardboard man
He leaps up from the trench onto the grassy bank -- falls
And is caught in his own arms
January 2008